The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (44 page)

And then it is over.

"Okay," Khadra says in a nearly sane voice. "I'm all cried out. Finito. Thank you for waiting. Let's move on. Everybody in the car!"

Jihad smiles with relief. Later, in some other night's telling, Khadra might become the nutty sister who cried and screamed at Beanblossom Bridge, but right now he's nice to her. He waves the guys away.

"Khadra? This might not be the best time, but I have to tell you something." He sits down on a rock ledge.

"God," she sighs. She comes over and sits down next to him. "I think I'm covered head to toe in mud. I need a bath."

"That's okay," he says. They sit quietly. The sawyer beetles tssrr- tsssst, tssrr-tssst. "Man, those are some loud crickets," he says.

" `I love to hear thine earnest voice,

Wherever thou art hid,

Thou testy little dogmatist,

Thou pretty katydid!'" she recites. "Oliver Wendell Holmes."

"Khadra, I'm in love with Sariah Whitcomb," Jihad blurts.

It is stunning news. "Wow," Khadra breathes.

"We've been in love for two years. No one else knows."

"Wow ... wait, how old is she?"

"Eighteen." They fell in secret love when she was only sixteen and he eighteen? She feels a twinge of sympathy for the parents, his and hers. Who wouldn't worry about their kids falling in love at that vulnerable age?

"We want to get married," he goes on.

This is huge. "I'm delighted you're in love, Jihad! What a blessing. Alhamdulilah."

"We didn't want it to happen. It just sort of-did, you know? Despite our best efforts."

Khadra marvels. She never would've had the courage at his age. It took that, to embrace love that seizes you outside your expectations. She tells him this and he beams.

"I'm serious. It was hard. We, like, tried to deny we were in love. For a long, long time. Like, weeks! I didn't know what was happening to me. It was like, you know in Saturday-morning cartoons, when the Road Runner runs out over the cliff and he's pedaling in the air, right? Then he looks down and realizes there's no ground under him anymore? I didn't ever think I d marry someone outside our religion. Neither did she-she told me. She grew up real religious. Actually, we first bonded over that-how strict our parental units are and stuff."

'Just-tell-them-we-are-from-France, " Khadra says in her Jane Curtin Conehead imitation. Jihad smiles.

Sariah wants to be a nutritionist, he says proudly. She has a scholarship to DePaul. Jihad is halfway through college. They'd be engaged for three years, giving them both time to graduate. Three years sounds wise.

"We've got a lot of stuff to figure out."

"Yeah."

"Like what about children. We want children, of course. Not right away but someday. What are they they gonna be? I mean, of course they'd be considered Muslim by default because, well, Muslim dad, Muslim kids."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"You're both on the same page with that?"

"Sure," Jihad says confidently. `But even if they are Muslim, what will they really wanna be? Because, I mean, they'll get to see both religions up close and like, both positive. Not, like, one is true and the other is false. They'll never have the pure sheltered one-religion experience our parents tried to give us. And, by `our parents.' I mean mine and Sariah's, both. Because it's not like one of us cares about our religion and the other one doesn't. We both care. A lot. I said that already, right?" He smiles and looks so tender and little boy vulnerable. He has such a huge mountain ahead of him to climb. "So they are gonna hear about religion from me and from her. Won't that confuse them?"

"Why do you suppose the Quran allows Muslim men to marry Christian women and Jewish women?" Khadra asks, in an open-ended tone. "Obviously, mothers are going to influence their children."

"They'll be Mor-lims."

"Mus-mons?"

They are quiet for a while. Then she says, "What about your band?" Chicago to South Bend was at least an hour commute. Puts a crimp in practicing every day.

"Yeah, that's the thing," Jihad says. "When me and Sariah get married, it might break up The Clash of Civilizations. Or it might not. But it's no contest, man."

The kid has his priorities straight.

"So here's the thing, Khadra," he says. "What's your schedule like after the conference? Do you have to get straight back to work, I mean, or-the thing is, could you come up to South Bend? I need you. I need you to be there when I tell Mama and Baba."

"High drama."

"Yeah. Especially Mama. And Sariah's going to be telling her parents at the same time. More drama. Only in her family, it's the dad who's sort of like Mama is in our family."

"He's the neurotic parental unit, then?"

"He's the one. He's all, he wants her to be `worthy.' They use that word a lot, `worthy.' So anyway, will you come?"

"Say no more, babe, I'm there," she says. She hugs him. It's going to be fireworks this July, that's for sure, she thinks as she walked back to the car. It's going to take every inner resource we've got to give this love a place to grow. All our families.

Hence vision is through the veil, and inescapably so.

-Ibn al-Arabi

The contact sheets are ready next morning. Good, because she's run into about as much of her past as she can handle. Now all she needs to do is sort the thing out. She spreads everything in front of her and loses herself in the work for a while.

"I don't care," Khadra argues on the phone with her photo editor. "The Awads are like family to me, I don't care if the Chief is excited about the polygamy angle. You said I had creative control."

"No, of course I don't agree with polygamy. I think it sucks. But it's their choice and they've figured out a way to make it work for them, and no, I'm not going to do an expose on how many Muslims in America can be found who do it. It's what the mainstream media always does: Pick the most sensational thing and highlight the negative -Am I accusing you of Orientalism? No, Ernesto, I am not accusing you of anything so B-movie as Orientalism. See, the wives thing is just not the core story here. Don't trip on it." She packs her bag as she speaks. "Okay? 'Bye for now."

She addresses the Madonna of the Trail postcard to her parents' home in South Bend. "Dear Mama & Baba," she writes. "Greetings from Muslimland-I'm in the midst of the Dawah! Saw this pioneer lady on the road & thought of you. Love from, Khadra. xxxooo." She'll mail it from Eyad and Omayma's house, where she's going to spend the day after the conference; she's looking forward to seeing how Coethar and Khalid are growing.

The phone rings just as she's at the door to head down for check out.

"Hi. Oh-I mean, assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh." Eyad got all nitpicky when Khadra did not use the full and proper Muslim greeting.

"Yes of course I'm putting that in the article, Eyad.... Well, I don't care if Omayma and her committee don't want it in. It's an important part of the story."

"La ilaha illa allah. Because it takes both sides to make a whole picture-the dark and the bright."

"Well, I think you're wrong. I think people will see the beauty in it too."

"Despite-despite all that. Yeah, even in spite of the Islamo- phobes and the ignorance out there. I'm counting on the intelligence of the readers-most of them."

"I am well aware of that. You don't have to tell me how harsh the scrutiny is that the Muslim community is under. I know all that. We still need to face our darkness too. Negatives and positives. No, for our own sake, not to pander to them. For the sake of `studying what our own souls put forth,'you know?"

"Stop it, Eyad. I cannot operate from fear anymore. I cannot operate from fear."

All paths are circular.

-Ibn al-Arabi

"It's about learning to surrender," Hanifa is saying, on the giant screen above the Speedway track. "Every race car driver knows that." It is Khadra's first sight of her since they were fifteen. Later, she'll see her in person, and they'll talk quietly.

"Surrender?" the sportscaster says. "Won't you crash if you do that?"

"You do everything you can to stay on track, of course," Hanifa explains. "You've trained. Your car, your engine, is right, down to the last nut and bolt. But in the end, you surrender-that's the only way you're going to get through the lap, going two hundred miles an hour." Here she gets into the race car, and her eyes sparkle like she's about to cartwheel through a mosque. "So you let go! And you feel your body doing it on its own, and your mind is thinking a thousand things and thinking nothing, and your heart is pounding, and you're connected to everything, to your car, to the air whizzing past, to everyone in the stands, to God. It all becomes one great big living thing." She puts the helmet on and waves.

Khadra is in the stands. She never would've thought she'd be okay going to a place like the Speedway. Coming here is like following the white man into his lair. The sport was founded by bootleggers, for goodness' sake. But here I am, she thinks. I am here!

As if to allay her fears, there is practically a whole Muslim bleacher section. Aunt Khadija and Uncle Jamal are here-she waves at themand they have Hanifa's daughter, thirteen-year-old Aziza, in tow. More black people and brown have been going to the race in recent years, not only in the stands and the pit, but at the starting line. So, in a lot of ways, it's a new day at the races, Khadra thinks. Maybe.

She looks around at the white people, too-the Americans-no wait, she's American now-the other Americans. Hanifa has a white mechanic in her crew, blond and earnest and solid. Midwesterners -Hoosiers-set in their ways, hardworking, steady, valuing God and family. Suspicious of change. In a funny way, Khadra realizes suddenly, as she surveys the crowd: they're us, and we're them. Hah! My folks are the perfect Hoosiers!

Khadra and Hakim go down to the concessions to get pop for Hanifa's daughter and themselves.

"I've been thinking of coming up to Philadelphia," Hakim says, as they take their places in line. He looks at her steadily. "Spending some time up there."

"Yeah?" Khadra says.

"Yeah. Because-I've been thinking-what if-well, what if we get to know each other again, as adults?"